Vanity means "excessive pride," "lofty opinion of one's abilities, appearance, dress, and achievements": "His loss in the election was a blow to his vanity." Vanity also has a meaning of "worthlessness," "something lacking in value": "He indulged in the vanity of a self-centered life." Related words include ostentation, pride, egotism, vainglory, complacency, conceit, self-esteem, and self-admiration. Vainness, as well as the adjectival form vain, is an uncommonly used synonym for vanity, particularly in the meanings of "valueless," "worthless," "baseness": "This pageantry is a show of pomp and vainness." Words related to vainness and vain in their basic meaning are trifling, trivial, futile, nugatory, profitless, and useless.
Dictionary of problem words and expressions. Harry Shaw. 1975.